Vigil for Darfur

 

Hold up your candle if you are an angel.

Hold up your candle if the light of hope

dances and curls about your spine

like the breath of light

about the wick.

Or blow out your candle if you believe

that when

these flames flicker out

we will forget

the faces we now see before us:

the faces

of the hopeful,

and the memory of the abused.

Hold up your candle

if the people standing along side you

have become your wings,

and that

side by side

we fly

to a better place and time.

hold up your candle if you know that sound does not travel

through air and wires but rather through the chords

of our hearts and that we will never

be able to claim

that we could not hear

a single cry

because a deafening ocean

stood between us.

Hold up your candle if you remember

how the world forgot 800

thousand Rwandans,

hold up your candle if you have a hole

burnt into your heart

by the Shoah, the Great Fire,

the Holocaust

and hold up your candle if you can still see

the smoke

and taste the ashes.

hold up your candle

if you know

that tears

only feed

that fire.

and hold up your candle

if you refuse to let the world

sob itself to sleep, waiting for a wish,

because we did not listen to them,

because we did not burn with them,

because we did not tell them

“I am

going

to save you.

Here,

I am your miracle.”

For who

dares to say that miracles are simply

the dusted spines

of Bibles?

Friends, look

at the crying wings you stand

side by side with, listen to the heavenly

psalms of hope and hurt, feel your heart

rise

through the halo above your head

to join with a hundred thousand others

who will heal

this world.

hold up your candle

if you

are an angel.

           

                --------------Sabina Carlson

 

Sabina Carlson, wrote this poem the night before she attended the Sudan Freedom Walk that came to Princeton, NJ.  She read this poem at the candlelight vigil.  Simon Deng (former Sudanese slave) loved it so much that he wanted it read again at the final day's ceremony on the Capitol steps in Washington.  Sabina was unable to be there, but someone else read it. Sabina is 17 years old and she lives in New Jersey.

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content © - Sabina Carlson, 2006
music © - Prit Roy, 2006
image source -  www.survivorsunited.com/ sudan_photos.html